cribed in future chapters, we can limit ourselves here to a
few sample cases taken at random.[25] Jacques and Storm relate (Floss,
II., 423) how one day in a Central African village, the rumor spread
that a goat had been carried off by a crocodile. Everybody ran to and
fro in great excitement until it was ascertained that the victim was
only a woman, whereupon quiet was restored. If an Indian refuses to
quarrel with a squaw or beat her, this is due, as Charlevoix explains
(VI., 44), to the fact that he would consider that as unworthy of a
warrior, as she is too far beneath him. In Tahiti the head of a
husband or father was sacred from a woman's touch. Offerings to the
gods would have been polluted if touched by a woman. In Siam the wife
had to sleep on a lower pillow than her husband's, to remind her of
her inferiority. No woman was allowed to enter the house of a Maori
chief. Among the Samoyedes and Ostyaks a wife was not allowed in any
corner of the tent except her own; after pitching the tent she was
obliged to fumigate it before the men would enter. The Zulus regard
their women "with haughty contempt." Among Mohammedans a woman has a
definite value only in so far as she is related to a husband;
unmarried she will always be despised, and heaven has no room for her.
(Ploss, II., 577-78.) In India the blessing bestowed on girls by
elders and priests is the insulting

"Mayst thou have eight sons, and may thy husband survive
thee." "On every occasion the poor girl is made to feel that
she is an unwelcome guest in the family." (Ramabai
Saravasti, 13.)

William Jameson Reid, who visited some of the unexplored regions of
Northeastern Thibet gives a graphic description of the hardness and
misery of woman's lot among the Pa-Urgs:

"Although, owing to the scarcity, a woman is a valuable
commodity, she is treated with the utmost contempt, and
her existence is infinitely worse than the very animals
of her lord and master. Polyandry is generally
practised, increasing the horror of her position, for
she is required to be a slave to a number of masters,
who treat her with the most rigorous harshness and
brutality. From the day of her birth until her death
(few Pa-Urg women live to be fifty) her life is one
protracted period of degradation. She is called upon to
perform the most menial and degrading of services and
the entire manual labor of the com